EMC NetWorker discussion <NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU> wrote on 
04/01/2008 04:13:25 PM:

> I think you are asking the question many of us are dealing with 
> right now..........what direction do you go?
> 
> We have gig connections, but we have more and more data we need to 
> backup.  Do we spend money and resources on a VTL....that still 
> means managing tapes.  Do we spend money on a de-dupe solution?  You
> can eliminate tapes if you don't HAVE to send stuff offsite but way 
> more expensive than a VTL environment.  Storage nodes will help 
> offload some of the work and storage for the networker server, but 
> its a license cost.

Something to be aware of with storage nodes ... they require a connection 
back to the NetWorker server. If that connection gets broken, the storage 
node doesn't back up the clients it's supposed to, since it's being 
controlled by the NetWorker server. (so my boss tells me)

We had that problem - we had a flaky connection to a couple of our sites, 
which had storage nodes with their own tape drives on them. They were 
supposed to backup the clients at those sites. Well, when the connection 
back here to the NetWorker server dropped, that storage node stopped 
backing up it's clients. (we eventually got those links fixed). So we 
bought NetWorker Business Edition Server licenses for those sites, so they 
don't depend on communicating with the NetWorker server here.

So I have NetWorker Network Edition server here in the data center, with 
70+ clients, and 2 tape libraries. We also have 4 NetWorker Business 
Edition Servers at 4 remote sites, which backup the servers in those 
respective sites, to their own tape drives. I have storage nodes here in 
the data center (dedicated storage nodes, with aftd devices, so some 
servers back themselves up to disk, and I clone from there).

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